Hard Drive Upgrade-Is thsi Possible

[Guest]

Hello all,

I have an older PII running XP home, with (2) 10 gig hard drives. Both are
full, and I want to upgrade to a larger drive that I can install as a backup
drive in a future computer.

The drive I'm looking at is a Seagate 250 Gig ATA-100 IDE.

However, my hard drive controller says it supports "Ultra-33".

So,
1). Will the 120 gig drive work ( I assume i'll need to partition it)

2). If so, could someone please walk me through the steps to get the new
drive going, what I want to do is migrate Everything from both drives to this
one big one.

I assume I'll set it up slave, load XP onto it, then set it up as a master,
then just copy the files??

Thanks for the help!

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

I seriously doubt your old motherboard will support
any new hard drive exceeding 32GB. You should
check with your computer or motherboard manufacturer
and see what the largest hard drive your motherboard
was designed to support.

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User
Microsoft Newsgroups

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

:

| Hello all,
|
| I have an older PII running XP home, with (2) 10 gig hard drives. Both are
| full, and I want to upgrade to a larger drive that I can install as a backup
| drive in a future computer.
|
| The drive I'm looking at is a Seagate 250 Gig ATA-100 IDE.
|
| However, my hard drive controller says it supports "Ultra-33".
|
| So,
| 1). Will the 120 gig drive work ( I assume i'll need to partition it)
|
| 2). If so, could someone please walk me through the steps to get the new
| drive going, what I want to do is migrate Everything from both drives to this
| one big one.
|
| I assume I'll set it up slave, load XP onto it, then set it up as a master,
| then just copy the files??
|
| Thanks for the help!

 

[Guest]

Since you are looking at seagate here is some suggestions from seagate to
check to be sure that the drive will work.
http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/ultra_ata100.html

As far as the steps to get it going there is usually a big diagram in with
the drive. The exact steps will vary based on what you have. Usually it will
involve replacing the IDE cable, setting the jumper (these days Cable Select
is fine usually), Mounting the drive.

You will want to install this new drive as your master and do a clean
install to it. With the size of your drive I would suggest doing a 10-15gb
partition just for the OS. Basically if you get to a point where you need a
clean install you can reformat your C: drive and leave all your data on your
other partitions. After you have your new drive installed with the os then
you can set up your 10 giggers as slaves and copy the data you need off of
them.

Just an Example of how my 120gb drive is partitioned:
C:\ (This is where my os is installed) 15 GB
D:\ (All programs that I install go here) 50 GB (Games are gettings to big
these days)
E:\ (Backups and data) 55 GB (all backup data and data from programs that I
work with gets stored here)

Basically what my layout allows me is this:
Clean installs can be done by just reformatting C without losing any
important info.
If I want to back up all my data to CD-R or DVD all I need to do is back up
my E drive. I don't have to go hunting around through my PC to back stuff up.

Hope this helps a bit.

 

[Daniel Crichton]

Jay wrote on Thu, 18 Aug 2005 07:59:06 -0700:

I have an older PII running XP home, with (2) 10 gig hard drives. Both
are full, and I want to upgrade to a larger drive that I can install as a
backup drive in a future computer.

The drive I'm looking at is a Seagate 250 Gig ATA-100 IDE.

However, my hard drive controller says it supports "Ultra-33".

So,
1). Will the 120 gig drive work ( I assume i'll need to partition it)

Possibly. It depends if the BIOS on the motherboard will recognise it. It
might not, or might only be recognised as around 70GB. If it does get
recognised, it'll run at 1/3 it's rated speed due to the slower interface in
your machine.

2). If so, could someone please walk me through the steps to get the new
drive going, what I want to do is migrate Everything from both drives to
this one big one.

I assume I'll set it up slave, load XP onto it, then set it up as a
master, then just copy the files??

That won't give you a duplicate of your existing setup. Most, if not all, of
the applications you have installed will work on the new drive. Here's what
I'd do:

1. Get PartitionMagic and create the boot disks on your existing machine.

2. Install the new drive on a spare connector, and use the PartitionMagic
boot disks to duplicate the other drives onto it as 2 new partitions,
ensuring you duplicate drive C first.

3. Remove the existing hard drives, and change the new drive to a master

4. Boot the machine up and it should all be fine.


If you should for some reason reboot between 2 and 3 you'll likely have to
wipe the new drive and start all over again - drive letters are assigned
differently in XP than they are in DOS, and you'd end up having the new
drive as drive E which will then result it being unusable as the boot drive
without a lot of messing around.

Dan

 

[Yves Leclerc]

ATA-100 hard drives will work with the ATA(Ultra)-33. However, you will not
get the speeds of ATA-100 connections.

Your major concern is: Since this is an older P-II based computer, you will
have problems getting the motherboard BIOS/CMOS to be able to see the full
250GB size. Your BIOS/CMOS may limit it to 8GB (or even 32GB). Therefore,
you need to but a separate IDE PCI controller card. This will allow the PC
to see the complete size of the newer harddrive, since the PCI controller
should have its own "bios" to control the access to the complete size of the
hard drive.

Do not look at any type of software which would tell Windows how to access
the complete disk capacity. This is known as "disk overlay" and can cause
problems with XP.

 

[ray_woodcock]

2). If so, could someone please walk me through the steps to get the new

drive going, what I want to do is migrate Everything from both drives to this
one big one.

I assume I'll set it up slave, load XP onto it, then set it up as a master,
then just copy the files??

I use Drive Image to do this. I think Norton Ghost is another option,
but I haven't used it. (It may be the *only* option, now that Norton
owns Drive Image.)

The steps I'd take would be something like this:

1. Plug the new drive into the computer, if it'll handle three drives,
or (if necessary) temporarily remove one of the two that's already
there. You may have to fiddle with the jumpers as you put various
drives into different positions, i.e., master or slave on your
controller.

2. Make at least two partitions on the new drive. Make the first one
a primary partition. FDISK will do this. I think XP has a way of
doing it too. I use PartitionMagic. I know that makes some people
gag, but I've had pretty good luck with it. Don't accidentally be
tinkering with partitions on the wrong drive.

3. Use Drive Image or Ghost to make image copies of your old drives
and save them to one of the partitions in the new drive (but not the
first partition). Drive Image, like Partition Magic, boots from a CD,
so you don't have any interference from Windows wanting to boot its own
way. You can get these programs cheap through e.g., PriceGrabber.

4. Remove the old drives.

5. Use your imaging software to restore the images to the appropriate
partitions. In particular, your Windows partition still has to be the
first one.

 

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

Jay

For your computer to accept drives larger than the type installed, you would
most likely need to do a BIOS upgrade, assuming that one is available to
enable large hard drives.. this is your first step..

Either the above or look out for a 20gb drive.. none are new anymore, and
not particularly cheap if you happen to come across one.. they are favoured
by small time computer builders, so may be hard to find..

 

[Guest]

So a controller card, something like this:
http://biz.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1070704&CatId=0

Plus the drive:
http://biz.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1265028

And I partition the new drive to 32gig sections, and i should be in business?

Thanks everyone!

 

[Guest]

That card and drive should work. You do not need to partition your drive in
32 GB partitions. Use what ever size you like.

 

[Frank]

Hello all,

I have an older PII running XP home, with (2) 10 gig hard drives. Both
are
full, and I want to upgrade to a larger drive that I can install as a
backup
drive in a future computer.

The drive I'm looking at is a Seagate 250 Gig ATA-100 IDE.

However, my hard drive controller says it supports "Ultra-33".

So,
1). Will the 120 gig drive work ( I assume i'll need to partition it)

2). If so, could someone please walk me through the steps to get the new
drive going, what I want to do is migrate Everything from both drives to
this
one big one.

I assume I'll set it up slave, load XP onto it, then set it up as a
master,
then just copy the files??

Thanks for the help!

The solution to this is to use an ATA 100 controller card. Move the _paging
file_
and _my documents_ to this drive. Then put everything that you can into
folders
(a good filing system) in my documents. Anything that you try along these
lines
is tenuous at best, especially with windows activation and validation. It
is also
sometimes a problem matching the PCI cards with the correct PCI slots in
those
older boards.